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So many of you may know I've had persistent misfires of last couple weeks after doing an intake valve cleaning job.

My misfires were on cylinder one, two, and five.

When I moved the injector from cylinder 1 into cylinder three the misfires went away and never returned. Cylinder five continued to misfire so I moved the spark plug into cylinder two and then the misfire had followed that.

After doing that and having a misfire on cylinder two now, I replaced the spark plug with a brand-new factory OEM one.

Then it went away for a few days and then it was still misfiring randomly when I would try to go wide-open throttle. Almost as if the timing was off.

I once again got a misfire on cylinder number five last night when going wide-open throttle in third gear around 3500 RPMs.

A member on The other forums had advised me that the grinding sound I heard When I press the start button to turn the engine over while I was cleaning the valve could have been arm or something broken on the Vanos system.

When I remove the valve cover today to inspect, it looks as if there is an arm that is supposed to clip through a guide and lock into place. this arm seems like it's pulled back into the retaining clip as seen in the picture. It also looks like the Vanos system is operated by hydraulic pressure coming up through the sensor which in turn rotates the sprocket which turns the variable valve timing cam.

It may be hard to tell from the pictures but does this look normal? Also the arm coming from the top going over to the sensor seems weak and when I press on it it moves and also feels like it's bending a little bit is this normal?